In a mobile society such as ours, many parents and other care providers to infants and young toddlers frequently lose or misplace the protective caps for baby feeding bottles. This problem is encountered frequently in day care situations where only one care provider is responsible for several small children. It seems small children also enjoy picking up the loose unattached protective bottle covers and playing with them until they lose their interest; the cap is then thrown away and/or lost.
The absence of a protective cap on the bottle can increase the likelihood of disease because airborne viruses and communicable diseases can be transferred when another child puts either the exposed nipple and bottle assembly or the unattached protective cover in his mouth.
In addition, it is very expensive to constantly replace the cap, and a nuisance not to have a cap when you need one.
There are teachings of providing a tether to connect a closure cap to a container; some of which permit free swiveling of the cap when it is fastened to the container. Concern has been focused on keeping a closure cap connected to the container it closes off so that when the cap is removed it will hang next to its container. Illustrative of devices used to retain caps on containers are chains attached to a fuel tank cap and to a mounting block which can be adhesively secured to an automobile; such a device is shown in Sherman, et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,432,120. The device connects the cap to a stationary surface utilizing an adhesive bonding material; this cap is not reusable nor transferable, and it is attached to a base member.
In Katzman, et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,874,570, a closure cap is attached by a flexible strap to a container which is a dispensing tube of toothpaste. The strap is fixed to the tube and rotatably attached to the closure cap by means of a ball at one end of the strap that fits into a circumferential groove on the cap.
Another example of a tethered cap that can swivel or rotate freely when connected to a container for dispensing fluids is Holmes U.S. Pat. No. 4,669,641. Again, the cap is of the closure-type and it is connected directly to the permanent body of the container. The concept of this patent and the prior art is to fixedly secure one end of the tether to a base member and then to jury rig some way to rotate the closure cap freely in reconnecting it to the base member or container without fouling the tether means. This type of assembly lacks a flexible, speedy, economical method for reusing the cap member of the assembly.
The above concept of strapping a closure cap in rotatable connection with a base member container for dispensing fluids is shown in Berney U.S. Pat. No. 4,595,130 which discloses the use of a tether having a loop at each end which fits inside of annular grooves on the top of a closure cap and around the base of the pouring neck of the container.